1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to an airbag device for protecting the upper half body of an occupant such as a driver and a passenger in a vehicle against an impact due to a side collision, the vehicle having seats disposed apart from each other in a vehicle width direction.
2. Related Art
A method has been widely used in which an airbag device provided in a vehicle is activated to reduce an impact to an occupant when a collision of the vehicle occurs. A conventional airbag device is disposed in a steering wheel provided forward of the driver's seat or in an instrument panel provided forward of a passenger seat so that forward movement of an occupant facing the airbag device is restrained. Thus, an impact to the occupant at the time of a head-on collision of a vehicle is reduced and the occupant may be protected from the head-on collision.
In recent years, a device has been developed that protects an occupant using an airbag device even at the time of a side collision of a vehicle. For example, what is called a side airbag device inflates between the side (door) of a vehicle body and the occupant to protect the occupant. Thus, the occupant is protected against a direct impact in a side collision of a vehicle as well as prevented from colliding with the side of the vehicle.
Such a conventional side airbag device is unable to restrain inward movement of the occupant in a vehicle width direction. For this reason, when a side collision of a vehicle occurs, the upper half body of the occupant may be moved in the lateral direction to collide with another occupant on the next seat or the neck of the occupant may be suddenly moved in the lateral direction and damaged. In order to address such problems, an airbag device described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2010-115947 allows an airbag to expand upward, the airbag being housed in a center console provided between the driver's seat and a passenger seat. Thus, the airbag expands between the driver's seat and a passenger seat, thereby making it possible to prevent collision between a driver on the driver's seat and a passenger on the passenger seat.
In the airbag device described in JP-A No. 2010-115947, the airbag housed in the center console expands upward. For this reason, in the case where the airbag deploys with small articles and/or drink placed on the center console, those small articles on the center console are bounded up when the air bag deploys, thereby causing danger. Consequently, small articles and/or drink cannot be placed on the center console, and thus the center console may not be effectively used in normal conditions.
Also, because there is a certain vertical distance from the center console housing the airbag to the head of an occupant, inflation and expansion of the airbag may not work before the start of movement of the head and the upper half body of the occupant due to a collision of the vehicle.